“The latest moves by the Associated Press toward putting a stranglehold on its content online, making it unavailable to other online publications who aren’t paying for it, signals the impending end to the free-for-all that’s defined Web 2.0.”

The backstory is that for months the AP — a cooperative with more than 1,400 U.S. newspaper members — has griped that its content is unfairly used online. The first publicized incident occurred in June when the AP sent the Drudge Retort a cease-and-desist letter for excerpting and linking to its content. The debate was heightened this week when in a statement and at its annual meeting the AP affirmed that it will pursue legal action against online publications that use its material without paying for it or at least sharing revenue.

“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said Dean Singleton, AP chairman, in a statement. “We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore.”

The AP’s issue is with publications that excerpt and link to its content, and with search engines, like Google News, which aggregate news stories that may be using the AP’s content without paying for it.

And while we know it’s hard to take seriously anyone who quotes Network in an annual statement, there’s good reason for concern.

But regardless of the finger-pointing, the underlying theme is clear: AP does not want to share its content with those who aren’t paying for it, and that changes things drastically.

The news organization is taking a lot of heat for not playing by the rules of the digital age, but it certainly isn’t alone. YouTube has been dealing with similar anger from the large networks who, oddly enough, don’t want their content stolen and uploaded on its site. Despite our collective delusion, the content of the world does not belong to everyone, and, yes, the people who pay for it do mind when you’re making money on it and they aren’t. Crazy, we know.

AP’s harsh tactics and legal threats are out of step with how the Internet works, which is why this is such a big deal. Most organizations operate under the pretense that excerpting and linking back to content is fair game on the Web.

But, despite our cries, the facts are clear: If organizations like the AP take a stand against this whole free-for-all, where what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is ours, it will signal the end of Web 2.0.

We can stomp our feet as we like and call the AP out of touch, but we can’t shun them completely and think the Web can otherwise survive. Without content from the big guys — the news organizations, the networks — the Web as we’ve come to know it does not exist. The large organizations operate as separate entities, and the underdogs who’ve been making some form of money off of them have to figure out how to stand on their own or share the little revenue they have for access.

When the people providing the content wake up to that fact, as the AP has, and start to pull it out from under the rest of us, that’s when reality will settle in for those whose livelihood and business model rely on its availability.